1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an electronic vehicle tag.
2. Background
There are numerous companies that produce aluminum and digital vehicle tags. Unfortunately, despite the name “digital vehicle tags”, such tags are not digital in any real sense, rather they are called “digital” because they are not stamped out, as are aluminum tags. In any event, existing aluminum and digital vehicle tags are not considered very sophisticated due to the lack of technology. For this reason it is quite easy for a driver to continue to drive the vehicle while under suspension because the current vehicle tag will still have a month and year decal that shows compliance. Law enforcement would not know it is suspended unless they call it in and check the status of the tag on the issuing authorities' computer system.
To date there has been little application of electronic compliance in the area of real-time vehicle suspensions, renewals or reactivations to an electronic vehicle tag that is fully independent of the vehicle it is issued to. By way of example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,105,179 to Smith, U.S. Pat. No. 5,621,571 to Bantli, U.S. Pat. No. 5,657,008 to Bantli and U.S. Pat. No. 6,404,327 to Naddeo all disclose various digital license plates, but none describe an electronic vehicle tag that does not use power to maintain a fully graphical display and which is completely independent of the vehicle it is issued to.
It would be desirable to have a device that allows a motor vehicle agency to instantly renew, suspend or expire a vehicle license plate regardless of the vehicle location by sending a signal of the new image and status, thus allowing law enforcement to easily recognize suspended or expired vehicles that are still operating on the roads. It would also be desirable to have a device that allows law enforcement to instantly send any type of warning message or image to a vehicle tag regardless of vehicle location (stolen, amber alert, etc.). Further, it would be desirable for motor vehicle agencies to be able to change the current vehicle tag type to a specialty tag, for example, upon the customer's request and without requiring new tags. Still further, it would be particularly advantageous to provide this aforementioned functionality while at the same time having a device that also retains its fully graphic image without power.
Therefore, what is needed is an electronic vehicle tag that maintains its image without power, and which further does not suffer from the aforementioned problems.